Hi allI wish to continue upon an off topic issue started here .Unfortunately i did not discover this 'official' standpoint before my DevCon unconference "Improving the translation process" topic, so i did not address this with Julio Camarero( being the Liferay Inc representative there).

For completeness i add the start of the discussion here;

Juan Fernández:

Hi Rasto!

Rasto Rehak:

I would like to see my language sk_SK to be moved from locales.beta to locales.enabled. Is that possible?

Let me explain the meaning of beta and official languages and how we are managing this.

Based on the feedback from the community and customers, we detected the need to formalize translations for the portal. In order to provide support for languages, we made the decission to have several "official languages", that are included in our support services, meaning that in case a customer finds an untranslated key, he can report it as a bug and we need to translate it in the response time we offer. For that reason, we created the concept of beta and official languages.

For a language to become official, it should accomplish two criteria:

#1 To be (almost) fully translated - more than 90-95% of all projects#2 Liferay should have an internal translation leader, who can offer support in case a customer complains due to a missing language key.

For Slovak translation we have #1 covered, but there's no one in the company that can provide translation support, so for now it is going to be a beta translation. This does not mean that it is incomplete nor bad, but that Liferay customers won't have official support for that language.

I hope I have explained the situation correctly. If you have any questions, don't hesitate in following the conversation here. Thanks a lot for your hard work, Juan

Let me disseminate my thoughts on Juan's response.

According to the portlet.properties a 'Beta' language is something the community can contribute to and the official languages not.As well as 'Beta' stands for a testing phase and translations marked as such are not production ready.FYI the difference between the listed 'locales' and 'locales.beta' are the 'locales.enabled';

Inspecting the code the 'Beta'-ness of a Language is determined with LanguageUtil.isBetaLocale(locale) and currently only used for displaying in the Language Portlet

Juan Fernández:

Let me explain the meaning of beta and official languages and how we are managing this.

Based on the feedback from the community and customers, we detected the need to formalize translations for the portal. In order to provide support for languages, we made the decission to have several "official languages", that are included in our support services, meaning that in case a customer finds an untranslated key, he can report it as a bug and we need to translate it in the response time we offer. For that reason, we created the concept of beta and official languages. ...But that Liferay customers won't have official support for that language.

Support is provided to Enterprise Edition only and in my opinion cannot be an argument for the 6.2 Community Edition release.

Juan Fernández:

For a language to become official, it should accomplish two criteria: #1 To be (almost) fully translated - more than 90-95% of all projects

Note: There is quite a difference if keys need attention because they are 'untranslated' or need 'attention'.

Juan Fernández:

#2 Liferay should have an internal translation leader, who can offer support in case a customer complains due to a missing language key.

Luis Mas translated Catalan and although highly appreciated he is AFAIK not (yet) incorporated by Liferay.Still Catalan is in the locales.enabled and not in the locales.beta lists.

Official 'EE supported' languages are not per definition 'Good'. Speaking for myself the Dutch translation is in parts better than the 'default' english, because that seems not normalized in sentence structure, has inconsequent use of terminology, is sometimes too complex for an average user and is not written by native speakersSince we use the German, Spanish and French languages as reference in Pootle, we have seen some anomalies in these translations too.Often erroneous or ambiguous texts are found when tested in context. So i can't agree with marking Dutch as well as Slovak, Norwegian, Italian,Taiwanese chinese and Russian as 'Beta' after all the hours we invested in improving.

So where does this vulmination lead to;Cheering the community contributions at DevCon and previous events doesn't match the fact that there was no open discussion on the criteria for this 'formalization'.Of course 'The Community' understands the need for decisions to be made, but in my opinion Liferay inc should at least consult 'The Community' on project decisions where contribution is so inevitable.

For CE i suggest that;- 'The community' (comprising Liferay inc) determines the definition of a 'Good translation'.- 'Good' translations are not listed as 'Betá'- 'The community' determines what 'Default' translations (locales.enabled) in CE are shipped.

For EE i assume that Liferay inc knows best what 'Official language' they like to list wherever.

So if you have any thought/ideas on this topic or share my opinion, please comment this Post.

First of all thanks for taking the time to share how you feel with the rest of all. This kind of constructive feedback always help us to improve the processes. I agree there are several wrong issues here, and I apologyze in the name of Liferay for any inconveniences we may have caused you or any other developer.

I agree with your points, and I think most of them makes sense. The problem is that we are close to package the version and currently engineering is focused on fixing the latest bugs, so there's no possibility to change the code right now (I'd like to start renaming locales.beta properties, but that is out of the table right now). The good thing is that you can move dutch from locales.beta to locales.enabled on you portal-ext.properties, so it reduces the criticity of this issue.

What we can do for now is to rewrite the help message on the properties file so that it explains the situation better. For that I'd like you all to help me. What about this?

Instead of the current "Specify the locales that are in beta. Go to http://translate.liferay.com to participate in the translation efforts." we could write something like this:"List of the locales that are supported by the community. Go to http://translate.liferay.com to participate in the translation efforts." How does it sound?

ps: Regarding Luis Mas and the catalan translation, you're right, Luis is not an employee, but Iñaki Sainz is, and he is the internal translation leader for catalan. That is why we made it official.

The problem is that we are close to package the version and currently engineering is focused on fixing the latest bugs, so there's no possibility to change the code right now (I'd like to start renaming locales.beta properties, but that is out of the table right now).

I agree i am already very late with these long existing beta languages.But some others issues we raise still made the cut after RC3 and these are likewise non intrusive either.Just moving certain 100% languages from locales.beta would be enough for now.

I do not think Dutch is a language that should be promoted as default anyway, so like Slovak, Norwegian, Italian.Taiwanese chinese and Russian on the other hand deserve the default locales more than Hungarian, Hebrew, Finish & Catalan

The good thing is that you can move dutch from locales.beta to locales.enabled on you portal-ext.properties, so it reduces the criticity of this issue.

Well thats a sigar! I myself can see that it is not marked as Betá !I support the locales.beta completely so i do not want it to be changed. I only think 100% translated languages like Slowak do not deserve the predicate Betá.It is just not motivating

What we can do for now is to rewrite the help message on the properties file so that it explains the situation better. For that I'd like you all to help me. What about this?Instead of the current "Specify the locales that are in beta. Go to http://translate.liferay.com to participate in the translation efforts." we could write something like this:"List of the locales that are supported by the community. Go to http://translate.liferay.com to participate in the translation efforts." How does it sound?

That sounds weird. Just define betá better or empty the (unnecessary) _BETA_SUFFIX Maybe you should introduce a key something like

Based on the feedback from the community and customers, we detected the need to formalize translations for the portal. In order to provide support for languages, we made the decission to have several "official languages", that are included in our support services, meaning that in case a customer finds an untranslated key, he can report it as a bug and we need to translate it in the response time we offer. For that reason, we created the concept of beta and official languages.

For a language to become official, it should accomplish two criteria:

#1 To be (almost) fully translated - more than 90-95% of all projects#2 Liferay should have an internal translation leader, who can offer support in case a customer complains due to a missing language key.

About "criteria for languages" I would like to share with you what emerged speaking with Riccardo Ferrari di Liferay during DevCon 2013. He made me aware about Microsoft Language Portal, a project to help application translations. This portal help a Terminology standardization and definition of Style Guides for each language.

Corné Aussems:

Official 'EE supported' languages are not per definition 'Good'. Speaking for myself the Dutch translation is in parts better than the 'default' english, because that seems not normalized in sentence structure, has inconsequent use of terminology, is sometimes too complex for an average user and is not written by native speakers.

Basing on these last Corné observations to help translation leader, contributors and translation process for the future we should add some other criteria:

#1 To be (almost) fully translated - more than 90-95% of all projects

1.1 Reach a consistent English translation (most of translation are not contextualized and came from English). English Style Guide needed. 1.2 Have a complete terminology (actually I'm not shure Pootle Terminology covers all Liferay terms now days)1.3 Trying Define a Language Style for other languages.

Bye,Denis

P.S. I'm not sure If we can use Microsoft Style Guides due to Term of use constraints.

HiI agree with your classification for good translation of any SW product. Though I know my translation is far from perfect :-) . Thank you for link to MS Terminology, it is interesting. I am using some Mozilla and other OS translations as inspiration.

There are also some other internationalization issues we did not talk about. For instance number and date formats in some portlets ( DDL ). Some of them are reported as bugs, but there is no consistent process of keeping it localized right.